Improvising melodies is one of the most intimidating things a string player can try. Even experienced classical players with superb technique often blanch at the thought of making something up as they go along. Improvising around a melody is scary enough, but you can feel absolutely lost if you’re called upon to improvise merely on chord changes. After all, instead of choosing notes from only one scale, you’re potentially swung through a series of different scales, each related to a different chord. And even if the chord progression allows you to hover in a single scale, you still lack a ready-made tune to work around.

But there’s no reason to freeze up. As jazz violinist Martin Norgaard points out, you can pluck melody notes out of the chords themselves. These are the “inner melodies” lurking within the chords, and Norgaard suggests how to find them in his book Jazz Fiddle Wizard (from Mel Bay Publications) for adult-beginner improvisers and in his Jazz Fiddle Wizard Junior for kids (also with versions for viola and cello). The Junior series includes a lesson with an easy vamp that introduces the concept of playing on chord changes, and volume two, due out this spring, has several easy lessons on inner melodies.

Here’s how Norgaard suggests you get started.

“The easiest way to improvise on chord changes is if there are only two chords, and they appear in symmetrical progression, kind of like a vamp,” says Norgaard. “The next more difficult thing to do is to create an inner melody on a diatonic chord progression. (‘Diatonic’ refers to a seven-note scale, such as the standard major and minor scales.) An inner melody is just a series of chord tones that make a melody.”

Jazz theorists have specific rules about these so-called guide tone lines, but Norgaard suggests that you take a more easygoing approach. “Just make a melody, skipping around in a way that sounds right to you,” he says.

The first several times you try this, Norgaard warns, it’s best to use a diatonic chord progression. If you use a nondiatonic chord progression, you’ll be forced to change scales, which may give you too much to keep track of in the beginning.

Take a look at the chord progression Norgaard has provided in Example 1 on page 27; it begins and ends with two measures of C major, but the four middle measures push off from three different chords. This sequence is inspired by a standard, “Take the A Train,” but the progression or variations on it are found in numerous other melodies.

First, you’ll need to do a little chord analysis, just by analyzing the roots. Write out your analysis. In this case, the sequence would be Imaj7, II7, IIm7, V7, Imaj7 (remembering that some of those chords are repeated).

Now, write out the chords in whole notes, as in the example.